"If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit."
Abraham Kuyper Common Grace 1.1.

Saturday, 3 March 2012

Mathematics and the Divine - a brief review

Mathematics and the Divine

A Historical Study

Edited by Teun Koetsier, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and

Luc Bergmans, University of Paris IV Sorbonne, Paris, France

Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004

hbk, 716 Pages

ISBN 978-0-444-50328-2

In 35 chapters, with 34 authors and 716 pages this is book explores history, philosophy, theology and the metaphysics of mathematics. I know of no other book that does just that.

Most of the usual suspects are here: Descartes, Pascal, Kepler, Galileo, Euler and Cantor. Others less 'usual' are Nicomachus of Gerasa, Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Faulhaber, Athanasius Kircher, John Wallis, Gerrit Mannoury and René Guénon. The emphasis is on people and movements rather than topics in maths - except where individuals are involved, e.g. infinity in the context of Cantor. The one exception is on 'divined proportion' which takes a look at the Golden ratio. The chapters are in topic chronological order.

It is good to see that it is not only Western mathematicians that are included; so we have chapters on Chinese number mysticism, mathematical models in Indian cosmology and geography in Islam.

Contents

Introduction

1. Ho Peng-Yoke, Chinese Number Mysticism

2. Kim Plofker, Derivation and Revelation: the Legitimacy of Mathematical Models in Indian Cosmology